‘I wanted to protect him’: Mother mourns teen slain near school amid settler violence in West Bank

More than a week after a shooting near a boys’ school in a West Bank village left a teenage boy and a man in his 30s dead, the community remains on edge, and residents say they fear more violence at the hands of Israeli settlers and the military.

“I wanted to protect him, but I didn’t have time,” cried Nidaa al-Naasan, the mother of Aws Al-Naasan, 14, as she visited the site in Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, where her son was killed. 

Surrounded by weeping family members, she fell to her knees, sobbing at the spot outside the school where Aws was shot, allegedly by an Israeli reservist. She wailed and raised her hands to the sky as she mourned her son, whose body is now buried in the local cemetery next to that of Jihad Abu Naim, 32, who was killed in the same attack.

Three others were injured in the shooting.

In its initial statement on the April 21 shooting, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said troops were dispatched to Al-Mughayyir following a report of rocks being hurled at a vehicle carrying several Israeli civilians, including a reserve IDF soldier. 

The IDF said the reservist exited the vehicle and opened fire at “suspects in the area.” The military says he was subsequently dismissed from his reserve duties, and his weapon was confiscated. When CBC asked whether the soldier would face criminal charges or further discipline, the IDF said military police are reviewing “the claim regarding two Palestinians who were killed and additional injuries.”

The shooting has left parents and students at the school on edge. Roughly half of the students have not returned to class, the school’s headmaster, Bassam Abu-Assaf, said. 

“Parents are extremely worried about the safety of their children,” he said, through an interpreter. 

“Everybody is in panic — the community, the students and the parents.”

Omar Nassan, 17, knew both of the victims. He is a distant relative of Aws and attended the same school.

“He’s not the first or the last friend that I lose,” he said. “I already accept that I’m going to be next. It’s not really much of a life. It’s just waiting for death now. It’s not living.”

About three million Palestinians live in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem), which is also home to more than 500,000 Israeli settlers. The latter group has intensified attacks on Palestinians in recent months as Israel has moved to expand settlements in the West Bank. The United Nations and several Western countries, including Canada, have declared them illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this, saying authorized settlements are legal under Israeli law. 

‘It’s becoming extremely dangerous’     

Witnesses to the shooting say that rather than pursuing the shooter, Israeli troops fired tear gas at students and teachers. The IDF said in its statement that after arriving on scene, the IDF soldiers “acted to disperse the violent confrontation in the area.”

“It’s becoming extremely dangerous, not only from the settlers but also from the army,” said Saed Na-a-San, whose two sons, ages 10 and 13, attend the school. 

Na-a-San says he rushed to the school the day of the attack and found a scene of sheer horror. He has since decided to send his two boys back to class but is taking special precautions.

“Before, the kids would walk to school. Now, I put them in the car. I bring them,” he said. 

“I sit at the school, waiting for them to finish, and then I take them home. I stopped working. Now, my task is to keep the safety of my children.”

Video taken on the day of the attack shows scenes of panic as children run to assist their fallen classmate amid the sound of gunfire. In one video, a man wearing military fatigues can be seen walking, crouching and firing toward the school.

More than 40 Palestinians killed this year

Prior to this recent shooting, the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had said 42 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as of April 23: 13 by settlers, 28 by Israeli forces and one undetermined. That’s more than in all of 2025, when settlers were accounted for nine out of 240 Palestinian deaths. 

An OCHA report released on April 10 documented more than 580 settler attacks across more than 190 communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem resulting in casualties, property damage or both. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned settler violence and pledged a crackdown but has also chalked up the phenomenon to “a handful of extremists” who do not represent the settler movement. Meanwhile, some human rights groups and the United Nations, accuse Israeli authorities of routinely turning a blind eye or actively supporting attacks against Palestinians. 

A March report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described a pattern of settler attacks aimed at displacing Palestinian civilians as “co-ordinated, strategic and largely unchallenged … with Israeli authorities playing the central role in directing, participating in or enabling this conduct.” The report found it was difficult to distinguish between state and settler violence and warned that the forcible displacement of Palestinian communities had raised “concerns of ethnic cleansing.”

The Israeli government, meanwhile, is proceeding with its policy of expanding settlements in the occupied territories. Netanyahu’s government has approved more than 100 new settlements since taking office in 2022, declared settlements that had previously been deemed unauthorized legal and has begun to re-establish outposts shut down decades ago under a previous disengagement policy.

Netanyahu has said in the past that the goal of settlement building is to safeguard Israel’s security and “fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state.” 

Last September, Canada, the U.K., France and other countries recognized the state of Palestine without specifying any territorial borders.